Product Description

From the Publisher

This book will not only serve as a reference guide to the VBScript language and syntax, but will also demonstrate its usage in context with many practical examples. It is ideal for anyone who uses VBScript as a programming language. It is a desktop reference and quick guide for ASP programmers, IE programmers and Windows Script Host programmers.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Back Cover

In response to the critical changes made to VBScript since the release of the previous edition of this successful resource, this new edition has been completely updated to cover Vista, Windows Server 2003, Internet Explorer, Microsoft PowerShell, and the many new developments to the latest version of VBScript. This experienced author team has returned to share practical examples, tutorials, and quick answers aimed at helping you take your scripting skills to the next level.

Continuing in the style of the prior editions, the book begins with an introduction to VBScript and explains how it works as a language. The authors then progress to explaining how to make use of VBScript within other technologies, and they offer advanced examples of VBScript code in action. You'll learn to do a variety of tasks, such as copy and move files, create folders and files, modify the Windows operating system, and more. Plus, the comprehensive appendixes are valuable references for you to gain greater insight into how VBScript works so that you can start using it right away to save both time and money.

What you will learn from this book

How to use variables, comments, and built-in VBScript functions

What VBScript is—and isn't

Advantages to using procedures

Ways to turn code into functions

How to modularize your code into procedures, modules, classes, and components

The difference between top-down and event-driven programming

Tips for organizing and reusing code

Techniques to make your code more clear and readable

Who this book is for

This book is for programmers, client- and server-side web developers, and system administrators who are interested in learning VBScript or becoming more proficient with it.

Wrox Programmer's References are designed to give the experienced developer straight facts on a new technology, without hype or unnecessary explanations. They deliver hard information with plenty of practical examples to help you apply new tools to your development projects today.

Most helpful customer reviews

Overall, VBScript: Programmer's Reference is pretty good and fairly useful.High points: - Wide range of relevant topics. - Good examples. - Extensive appendicies.Low points: - Already out of date. - Worthless and frustrating index. - Lots of undefined acronymns. - Discontinuity of writing styles between the many authors.I have been writing embedded software for a long time, but am relatively new to VBScript and Windows. I found this book to be useful for me, but I suspect that there are probably better books out there.

Although there are many books on scripting, there are only a handful of books about VBScript. Of those that do focus on VBScript, many pages are devoted to server-side web scripting with active server pages, which is amply covered by the many titles on ASP. This book by contrast is current, complete, and packed with chapters about all the cool things you can do with VBScript, including COM objects and how to write your own, regular expressions, HTML applications (*very* cool), ADO, how to build the Script Control into your applications, and yes, ASP. That's the first 500 pages. The remaining 280+ pages are references and appendices that add depth. I have seen no other reference in print or online from Microsoft that goes to these lengths to elucidate what can be done with VBScript.The writing style is very approachable, and the Wrox Press model of a team of qualified people tackling different topics works very well (11 authors and 7 technical reviewers). These people really know the topics, and the book is well edited. An excellent value.

I have read VBScript Programmer's Reference. I would to congratulate the team who put this book together. Its so well written I was programming within the day. Not just a "Hello World" program but a program of substance that opened files, validated them, wrote events in the event log etc.The book is easy to follow and the short introduction to programming most useful for non-programmers like me and my team.Unfortunately, for me, the book will lead to more work for me and my team of technical mainframe support staff converting mainframe legacy JCL to VBScript. I will be ordering two more copies of the book for my team and I am sure that they will gain much from it.Even after a few days, members of staff from programming teams keep borrowing the book I am now forced to lie about its location (under my desk).If I had a criticism I would say that Cscript should be covered in a little more detail, but its only minor point and I found the information I was looking for on the Web.

I bought 3 books on VBScript, the others are not bad books but they are written with a rocket scientist in mind and assume that the reader is competent in programming and modern scripting techniques. Thankfully your book saved the day and I actually enjoyed reading it. I get the impression that the team that put it together also enjoyed that task, it seems to come across in the text anyways.Its a great book.

I wanted to learn VB script so I bought:-Vbscript in a Nutshell : A Desktop Quick Reference-Vbscript Programmer's Reference-Learning Vbscript (Nutshell Handbook)-Visual Basic 6 form the ground up (due to shortage of vbscript books)The only book that took me from some background in programming to a better understanding of programmng and being able to solve problems using VBscript was the book: Vbscript Programmer's ReferenceIt wasn't perfect, for my needs I would have liked more info on OLE, automation and object models.I needed to learn VBscript to write scripts for Softimage XSI and Photoshop accessing their object models, OLE and this was the only book that taught me VBscript and how I might approach certain tasks.The other books are as the titles imply nutshell books, but are really reference in a nutshell. They say what things are but do not take you through any steps to learn how to use them or better understand through use what they are. They are typically written by those who know but don't understand how to teach to soemone who knows little or nothing. These authors would write a dictionary to teach you english.Now that I know better what I am doing I have no reason to reference these poorly written books and still reference the Vbscript Programmer's Reference Book. The other books were hardly looked at past the first few chapters, and were a waste of money and time, especially the O'Reilly books. Vbscript Programmer's Reference Book is decent for a begineer to pre-intermediate programmer, wish there were more on VBscript.

The book starts with a strange 'Introduction to Programming' chapter, which is for people who don't know what a variable is (good thing _that's_ in a language reference book!) Meanwhile, there is no 'Introduction to VBScript' chapter. I found it very difficult to find simple information on syntax and keywords (just try to find anything on function return types or declaring arrays...) The main Appendix, which contains lots of valuable information, is organized randomly by arcane subjects (and there's no listing of the subjects) so it's difficult to find anything. It also seems to be lifted out of a VB book and contains things that aren't even supported in VBScript.The range of topics covered is useful if you're trying to decide whether VBScript is right for your project . But if you're just trying to write Active Server Pages, I recommend skipping this book and getting 'Beginning ASP' by Wrox -- it uses VBScript exclusively and has a better introduction to the syntax and usage of the language.